


house of worship

by relationshipcrimes



Series: prompt fics 3 [4]
Category: Persona 5
Genre: Gen, Persona 5 Royal Missed Deadline Bad End
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-16
Updated: 2021-02-16
Packaged: 2021-03-17 23:29:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,172
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29479959
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/relationshipcrimes/pseuds/relationshipcrimes
Summary: In the P5R missed deadline bad end, Goro still sometimes visits Akira while he sleeps, hoping that Akira will wake up. The rest of the world might have to accept Maruki as their new god, but Goro refuses to give in--and he won't let Akira give in, either.
Relationships: Akechi Goro & Kurusu Akira, Akechi Goro & Maruki Takuto
Series: prompt fics 3 [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2164914
Comments: 4
Kudos: 82





	house of worship

**Author's Note:**

> written for the prompts "pedestal" from @shantealeaves and "sleep" from @flooffluffpupp on twitter

Goro has nothing to say to Akira now, but he still hopes that Akira will speak to him. Nothing, insofar as Goro is concerned, matters in this reality anyway, so he begins to skip school. He begins to let his emails go unchecked. He sometimes doesn't even bring his phone. And he sits at Akira's bedside, day after day after day, and believes that Akira is better than someone who would just lay down and let Maruki have his way.

On the seventh day, the hairs on the back of his neck prickle and he has his gun in his hand before he knows what he's doing. The bullets goes straight through Maruki's chest and embeds itself in the far wall of Akira's bedroom.

"Akechi-kun," Maruki says, gently disappointed. The bullets didn't make even a mark on Maruki's incorporeal form. "You'll disturb his rest."

"Good," Goro says, and for a second actually hopes that the gunshots woke Akira up—but no, Akira is still asleep, his face peaceful, his phone still halfway out of his open palm. "Waking this idiot up is what I'm here to do, coincidentally." Goro turns back to Maruki, tries to calculate if there's a way that he can actually puncture Maruki's real body this way. (If, of course, Maruki still has a real body since the target deadline passed...)

"Unfortunately not," Maruki says. "Corporeal form was one of the many things I had to give up."

Goro nearly jumps out of his skin. " _Get out of my head_ ," Goro hisses.

"He would like it if you spoke to him in his sleep," Maruki says, answering a question that Goro has had more than once when he visited Akira's comatose body during the last few days. Goro freezes. "He can sometimes hear you. He misses you, even."

Suddenly, Maruki is standing over Akira's bed. Goro scrambles away from him, tries to keep the gun trained on Maruki's face, but Maruki only looks down at Akira with a paternal look that makes Goro's gut squirm. He waves his hand, and a few of the cobwebs around Akira's bed disappear. "He doesn't miss you enough to want to wake up, but he does miss you."

"You have such a talent for blaming your actions on everyone else," Goro replies.

Maruki sighs. "He wanted to have the choice taken from him. You must realize that. He wanted to go to sleep."

Goro still has not put the gun down. His arm is beginning to ache. "He did not."

Maruki looks up. He gestures to the bed—to the same place that Goro had sat yesterday, when he'd had half a moment of weakness and begged Akira to wake up. Goro should have fucking known the creep was spying on him; he resolves never again to have a single emotion, inside or out, if it means keeping it from this god-complex piece of shit.

Goro does not sit down. "Akira Kurusu would never have given up free will.”

Maruki is now sitting on a chair that wasn't there before. Goro struggles to realign the gun and really does fire. The bullet sinks into the wood of the chair as Maruki begins: "Look at it from his perspective."

"My job isn't to _see things from his perspective_ ," Goro interrupts. Goro's job is to see things from _his own_ perspective, and challenge Akira where he is wrong, in the same way that Akira saw things from his own perspective and challenged Goro where _Goro_ was wrong. It so happens that Akira is wrong now. Goro doesn't intend to let Akira down on their bargain.

Maruki goes on: "Have you heard of the trolley problem, Akechi?"

"The trolley problem is a classic case of upper management incompetence and engineering safety failures that is then blamed upon the individual."

Maruki laughs. "He did say you were clever," Maruki says with such an inordinate amount of distant, sad fondness that for one moment Goro sees how Akira and Maruki genuinely did become friends. "Now, that may be true. But in this case, it doesn't matter who caused the trolley problem or why it occurred. What matters is that I am the switch that will save the entirety of humanity's happiness."

"Good god you're conceited," Goro says.

"Let me finish. I'm the switch. Either we go down the path of human misery and freedom, or happiness and safety at the expense of choice. It is Kurusu's choice which path we go down."

"Akira would not be in this position if _you_ had not—"

"It's his choice only because he has chosen resistance," Maruki says. There is no force behind his words. There's no bluster. The logic is laid down gently, the way someone would lay down an impossibly and immovably heavy weight.

"The fact of the matter is, Akechi, that Akira's decision now is to either give humanity happiness, or condemn them to misery. If he chooses happiness, then he must live with the weight of having sacrificed free will. And if he chooses misery... he must live with having actively condemned humanity to sadness and misfortune."

"It's still your fault," Goro replies smoothly.

Maruki laces his fingers together. "Maybe that is my fault, then. So be it. I am willing to take responsibility for it."

"Responsibility doesn't help anyone now," Goro sneers. " _Do something about it_ , doctor."

"You must understand that our conversation is going in circles because you are refusing to understand my position. I _am_ doing something about it. Kurusu has made so many difficult decisions over the last year. He wanted not to have to make this one."

"Akira would never be so weak," Goro replies.

For some reason, this statement earns him a long stretch of silence. "Please put the gun down," Maruki says at last. "You know you can't hurt me this way."

"No." It's the principle of the thing.

"Don't you think you put him on a bit of a pedestal?" Maruki says suddenly. When he looks up with his fingers laced, he looks so much like a therapist ready to write Goro's answers down on a clipboard that Goro has to resist the urge to shoot him again. "He's only a teenager. He's younger than you, even."

"I didn't put him on any _pedestal_. I expected the best from him."

"You expected too much from him," Maruki replies.

"You're so full of shit."

Maruki sighs deeply. "He misses you, Akechi. But he doesn't miss you enough to want to wake up."

Goro empties the rest of his clip into the chair and Maruki is no longer there. Goro whirls around. " _Leave_ ," Goro snarls at Maruki, standing amiably by the stairway with his hands in his pockets. " _Fuck_ you! Get out of my sight!"

"I don't think it's a good idea for you to be alone with him right n—"

"GET OUT," Goro bellows, and Maruki is no longer there. There is only the sound of Akira's soft breathing, deep and untroubled, and the slight burn of gunpowder along Goro's fingers.

**Author's Note:**

> twitter [@p5crimes](https://twitter.com/p5crimes)  
> tumblr [@akechicrimes](http://akechicrimes.tumblr.com)


End file.
